Westport college student among 3 killed in Minn. crash

Wes Duplantier

Updated 9:34 pm, Saturday, March 1, 2014

A 20-year-old Westport man was among three college students killed Friday, Feb. 28, 2014 after their SUV spun out of control on an icy road near Northfield, Minn. and crashed into an oncoming tractor-trailer. Michael Goodgame was a 2011 Staples High School graduate. and a member of the Carleton College ultimate Frisbee team.
Photo: Carleton College

A 20-year-old Westport man was among three college students killed Friday, Feb. 28, 2014 after their SUV spun out of control on an icy road near Northfield, Minn. and crashed into an oncoming tractor-trailer. Michael Goodgame was a 2011 Staples High School graduate. and a member of the Carleton College ultimate Frisbee team.

Michael Goodgame, in the middle row fourth from the left, poses with the Carleton College ultimate Frisbee team. He and two other students were killed in a crash in Minnesota on Friday, Feb. 28, 2014. Goodplay, 20, was a 2011 graduate of Staples High School in Westport, Conn.
Photo: Carleton College

Friends, family and former teammates both in Westport and Minnesota on Saturday mourned the death of 20-year-old Michael Goodgame, one of three young men who died Friday when their sport-utility vehicle crashed on an icy Minnesota highway.

All were students at the small liberal arts college about 45 minutes south

of Minneapolis.

A Carleton spokeswoman confirmed Saturday that the three had been traveling to a college Ultimate Frisbee tournament at Stanford University in California when the accident occurred. Less than three miles from the Carleton campus, their SUV lost control and spun before it was hit by an oncoming tractor trailer.

In addition to the three men who were killed, two other students were seriously injured. Local authorities said Saturday that neither excessive speed nor alcohol appears to have been a factor in the crash.

"The collective Carleton soul aches for the loss of these three young men," Carleton President Steven Poskanzer said Friday. "Right now, we need to focus all our love and compassion on supporting the families and friends of all these young men, along with everyone in our community who cares for them."

A 2011 graduate of Staples High School in Westport, Goodgame was majoring in political science and would have graduated next year. He wrote for the college's student newspaper, was a member of the swim team and played for two years on the Ultimate Frisbee team, which finished as the third-ranked team in the nation last year.

Over the past two summers, he worked as a lifeguard and as a research intern for a Washington-based group called No Labels, which seeks to decrease partisanship in the nation's political discourse.

In 2011, Goodgame interned for Write Yourself Free in Westport and one of his pieces, about the importance of storytelling, was published on the blog of Dan Woog, a Westport native who blogs for Hearst Connecticut Media.

Woog, the head boys soccer coach at Staples, said Saturday that he knew Goodgame, who had played on the school's freshman soccer team.

"I knew Michael as a good, smart kid, with strong values," he said.

Goodgame was an accomplished swimmer at Staples. On Saturday, several people took to Twitter to share their memories of him.

"Rest in peace to the man with the greatest laugh in CT, Michael Goodgame," wrote Charlie Greenwald, one of his high school friends.